In printers and copiers, for example, sheets of media are fed from a media support tray having a plurality of sheets of media stacked therein for sequential feeding to the printer or copier. Two examples of feeding sheets of media from a support tray are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,895,040 to Oleska et al and U.S. Pat. No. 5,918,874 to Armstrong et al, which are incorporated by reference herein.
Integrated labels include a paper backing having a label portion releasably adhered thereto whereby the label portion may be removed after printing on the label portion for application to an article, for example. For example, pharmacies now utilize an integrated label in which a label portion has spaces for printing the patient's name, the physician's name, the name of the drug, and the dosage from a computer controlled printer.
The remainder of the paper backing constitutes a paper portion, which is not covered by the label portion and is larger than the label portion. One side of the paper portion could have instructions and the side effects for the particular drug printed thereon by the printer during the passage of the integrated label through a processing station of the printer. The other side of the paper portion could have printed matter already on it since it is on the opposite side from where printing occurs.
With this type of integrated label, the label portion is several times thicker than the paper backing to which it is adhered. Thus, the paper backing functions as a substrate for the label portion.
As shown and described in each of the aforesaid Oleska et al and Armstrong et al patents, the media support tray has a dam inclined upwardly from the support surface on which the sheets of media are stacked. Each sheet of media has its leading edge advanced into the dam by a pair of feed rollers and then advanced upwardly along the dam and a predetermined path thereafter to a processing station in the printer or copier. With narrow width sheets, only one of the pair of rollers is employed in the aforesaid Armstrong et al patent.
When the thickness of the label portion is several times thicker than the paper backing to which it is adhered, the leading edge of each of the label portions may not advance up the dam of the media support tray. This is particularly true when the label portion of the integrated label extends rearwardly from the leading edge of each of the integrated labels.
When the integrated labels of varying thicknesses are in a stack on the support surface of the media support tray, the uppermost labels in the stack tend to slide away from the dam so as to be spaced further away from the dam when stacked on the support surface of the media support tray. With the leading edge of the integrated label spaced from the dam, the leading edge of the integrated label may curl down as the integrated label is advanced by feed rollers. When this occurs, the label portions will occasionally turn down instead of moving up the dam. As a result, no integrated label can be fed from the stack.
Another problem in feeding integrated labels from a media support tray can occur if a user adds sheets of the integrated labels to a partially filled tray of the sheets of the integrated labels so that they overhang the initial integrated labels; this occurs when the user places the leading edge of the label portion of each of the new integrated labels in contact with the dam, for example. Accordingly, because of the weight of the label portion of each of the new integrated labels being unsupported, each of the uppermost integrated labels will tend to curl downwardly at its leading edge. This also can prevent feeding of the integrated labels.
Instead of loading the integrated labels so that the label portion of each of the new integrated labels extends beyond the initial integrated labels in the stack, the label portions of the new integrated labels could be loaded by a user so that they are further away from the dam than the initial integrated labels on which they were stacked. When this occurs, the location of the uppermost sheet of the stacked integrated labels may be such that the location of the feed rollers is too far forward for the feed rollers to engage the uppermost sheet to advance any sheet of the stacked integrated labels into engagement with the dam.
A further problem can occur when the uppermost sheet of the stack of the initial sheets of integrated labels extends into engagement with the dam prior to additional sheets of the integrated labels being stacked thereon. When this occurs, there can be multiple feeding of the lowermost sheet of the added sheets of the integrated labels along with the uppermost sheet of the integrated label of the initial stack and possibly one or more sheets of the integrated labels therebeneath.
Thus, several problems can occur when an integrated label has its label portion substantially thicker than the remainder of the integrated label, particularly when the label portion of the integrated label extends rearwardly from its leading edge. These problems include jamming because of the curling downwardly of the particular label portion, inability to feed any sheets of the integrated labels, and multiple sheet feeding, for example.